Past Misdeeds: Cartes sur table (1966)

aka Attack of the Robots

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

Oh no! International bigwigs are murdered by guys and gals in blackface, wearing what we from a more enlightened age can only describe as hipster glasses! The perpetrators are acting kinda weird, too, as if they were some sort of mind-controlled…robots. They are also losing their black-faces when they get killed.

Interpol finds out that these killers – at least the ones they can get their hands on after their deeds – are all people who mysteriously disappeared before now turning up all minstrel show-y. The only connection between these disappeared is their shared blood group – rhesus zero (scientific fact: the film’s science might be ever so slightly dubious). Some very vague clues point to a charming tourist spot in Spain. Because they really want a rhesus zero blood type kinda guy to investigate things in Spain, and there’s a disturbing lack of them in active service, Interpol rope their former, rhesus as well as brains zero, agent Al Pereira (Eddie Constantine) back in. Al isn’t too happy about the whole thing, particularly because a “Chinese” gentleman with the extremely probable name of Lee Wee (Vicente Roca) wants him to do the same job too, but he’s actually even too stupid to properly say no to anyone, be it Lee or Interpol. Well, at least Al’s pretty good at punching people, and charming the ladies (pheromones, I guess?).

These awesome talents will be put to good use once Al attracts the attention of robot people builders Lady Cecilia Addington Courtney (Françoise Brion) and Sir Percy (Fernando Rey) and their entourage, as well as the ire of the Chinese, and the interest of one Cynthia Lewis (Sophie Hardy).

I don’t actually know much about French genre films beyond Oughties horror, a bit of 50s swashbucklers, and Jean Rollin, but I do know the French had a – somewhat inexplicable, so I assume comparable to Jerry Lewis – thing for Eddie Constantine, hero of a quintillion of pulpy crime, spy and Godard movies, and not exactly the most inspiring actor ever to come from America, what with his difficulties expressing those “emotions” people talk about so much. One thing Constantine – as far as I know, and as Cartes as well as the Godard connection suggests – really had going for him was that he was clearly game for anything at all, with no unhelpful ideas about personal or thespian dignity. Just like Sir Ben Kingsley, now that I think about it.

Which obviously makes him the ideal lead in this relatively early directorial outing of my favourite Jesus, Jess Franco, because like all Eurospy films Franco made, Cartes sur table quickly turns out to be a Eurospy farce full of bat-shit insane ideas. The film, of course, does not make the slightest attempt to do stupid and boring stuff like tell a sensible, logical story (as if that had much risk of happening in any Franco film) in a sensible logical way, and instead throws bizarre dialogue, weird shit, and various incredibly fake looking but awesome and spirited punch-ups at its audience until it will either run off in a huff, or roll with it laughing and grinning, and having as much of a time as Constantine seems to have. Sure, the man wasn’t a great actor, and I don’t think one of the great low budget charismatics, but he sure seems to enjoy his time on screen so much it’s difficult for me not to share in the fun. So, unlike with Jerry Lewis, the our French neighbours were right.

Having fun with the possibly insane is made to look (and feel) particularly easy by Franco, of course. At this stage of his career, when he actually needed to make movies that didn’t exclusively cater to himself and his obsessions (which I actually love him and his films for, quite a lot), Franco’s films couldn’t quite get away with the full self-indulgence, so this Eurospy comedy can’t spend the time on the moments of leisure and boredom that soon became so important in the director’s films.

Fortunately, this is so early in Franco’s career too, he doesn’t just get bored with the whole affair and shoots some random crap, takes his cheque, and makes three other films with that money. Instead, Franco chooses a classic and simple one damn thing after another approach we, the easily distractible, always will enjoy. Among these damn things are some Franco mainstays, like two (alas only very short) improbable night club numbers of the kind I generally find impossible to describe effectively (because that’s what the movies are for, and I’m not Jess Franco), a main villainess with a bit of a kinky handle on villainous life and a charming dominatrix personality, the inexplicable business with the black-face robot zombie people, bizarre asides like the scene where Constantine finds his hotel room smashed after a Chinese goons versus robot goons fight in his absence, fetches a porter to complain, only to find a perfectly fine room again because the surviving Chinese have – for no reason I could make out, of course – taken it upon themselves to clean up behind themselves once they are alone in the room. All the while, Cynthia watches the proceedings through an absurdly large hatch in the wall. The Chinese only miss two corpses, but what the heck, right? Plus, that gives the film the opportunity for some corpse joke business taking up the next five minutes.


And if that doesn’t convince you Cartes sur table may be slightly atypical Franco but also very fun Franco, I don’t know what could.

OSS 117 - Mission for a Killer (1965)

Original title: Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117

Everyone’s favourite secret Cajun agent, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (Frederick Stafford) aka OSS 117 finds his R&R in the Alps rudely interrupted by another mission. Apparently, the number of terrorist attacks on Important People™ has risen considerably in the last couple of months. Responsible for all the – mostly suicidal – attacks are perfectly common people without any radical political backgrounds or histories of violence. 117’s higher ups have found out that the killers have been mind-controlled with the help of some sort of drug, and have traced that drug’s production to Brazil, and of send our hero there.

In Brazil, OSS is first to contact his local colleague, gather information and go villain hunting according to whatever this information may suggest. Unfortunately, said colleague turns out to have been nearly killed in the sort of “accident” that can happen when somebody blows your car up with a grenade, and the villains of the piece are rather keen on scratching the “nearly” from this sentence. While they are at it, they’re also trying to murder 117, which turns out to be rather more difficult than they seem to have expected.

Our hero for his part clearly follows the standard eurospy movie agent tactics of punching guys and flirting with women, knowing full well that this will eventually lead him where he wants to go, as the genre conventions prescribe.

In this third movie in the 60s version of the adventures of OSS 117, and also the third directed by André Hunebelle, Frederick Stafford replaces Kerwin Matthews in the title role, and I rather liked him in this one. Sure, I doubt, as with nearly all eurospy heroes, that his flirtatious moments would charm anyone (call me the eternal optimist), but he’s really rather convincing at portraying the more ruthless man of action side of the character, while looking good enough in a suit to still work in the kind of society spies move in this sort of film.

Mission for a Killer, like most of the OSS 117 series, belongs to the relatively classy arm of Eurospy movies that can’t keep up with the budget of a James Bond outing but clearly aren’t made out of cardboard and spit. There are actual production values, like partial location shoots in Brazil, and a script that has problems but is generally coherent and sane inside of the rules and regulations of the non-realist spy film. Hunebelle, despite not being one of the revered French masters, was a pretty great genre director, when it came to swashbucklers and action-based spy movies at least, staging all sorts of inventive action scenes between rough punch-outs and somewhat ambitious semi-mass fights. He is particularly great at using the locations as actual physical spaces, demonstrating an eye for verticality that is often curiously lacking in directors (or not so curiously when a film simply can’t afford to use it).

Plot-wise, this is pretty much bread and butter Eurospy business, with the usual reversals and betrayals, the obligatory capture of the hero, and so on and so forth, but it’s all well-paced and carefully enough constructed if you are willing to buy into the basics of how espionage works in Eurospy films (and if you don’t, you’re probably not exactly the audience for this write-up or the film), and makes for a fine time when combined with Hunebelle’s skills and a glass of wine or two.


Politically, there is of course something a bit dubious about a film that has its hero fighting off revolutionaries against the Brazilian government, including a bunch of paratroopers landing to rousing music, just the year after a coup d’état in the real country that replaced a democratically voted-in government with what would become a twenty year military dictatorship. However, the novel this is based on was written in 1955, and I don’t really think the filmmakers were trying to do propaganda work here, and more being a bit careless with the real world their film has very little to do with anyway. In this context, the portrayal of the revolutionaries is actually rather fitting, and pretty damn funny, for the film seems to go out of its way to not give them an actual political stance while still using the popular version of revolutionary iconography with them. So there’s not a single actual political statement made by any of these guys. Instead, we get vague speeches about The Revolution that completely leave out for what and against what they are fighting in what I can only see as a truly awkward attempt by the filmmakers to have their cake and eat it, too.

OSS 117 Murder for Sale (1968)

Original title: Niente rose per OSS 117

aka OSS 117: Double Agent

aka No Roses for OSS 117

An organization cleverly known as The Organization is successfully committing a good number of high profile political assassinations. US secret agent OSS 117 (John Gavin), Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath to his friends, decides to do something against it. He does the logical thing and gets some plastic surgery to look like the most wanted international killer of them all, sleeps with a random beautiful woman so she can rat him out to the police, and then awaits rescue by The Organization. Which somehow really does work, so our hero – such as he is – ends up in the palazzo and headquarters of The Organization’s boss, The Major (Curd Jürgens hamming it up lovingly). Situated there, 117 has a fine opportunity to get bored by classical music (philistine!), bed the place’s doctor (Luciana Paluzzi), make enemies with the Major’s right hand man Karas (George Eastman in all his hairy glory), and spy a bit. Eventually, he is sent on a mission, during which he will be poisoned by Robert Hossein, have more sex (this time around with Margaret Lee), come up with plans that make no sense at all, and get involved in fisticuffs and mild car chases.

André Hunebelle’s Murder for Sale is the only time John Gavin was playing the title role in a film about agent OSS 117 (based on a long running series of French pulpy spy novels), and I’m not terribly surprised by it. Now, unlike your serious John Le Carré-style espionage material, Eurospy movies of the sillier Bond-affine variety – to which the film at hand absolutely belongs – don’t live or die on the merits of their lead actors. These guys are mostly there to punch uglier guys and look good in a suit, so basically any more or less handsome visage will do. However, Gavin’s not a terribly convincing puncher, while his acting approach here seems like an attempt to channel Alain Delon’s patented icy coolness, perhaps with an added wink from time to time, which might have sounded like a good idea at the time but mostly results in this OSS 117 feeling very bland rather than cool.

Fortunately, that’s not terribly important, and the rest of the film is a perfectly entertaining example of its style, and one that doesn’t have the slapdash feel of many a Eurospy movie either. Hunebelle had quite a bit of experience with genre movies of all types, and he manages to take the very silly script, pump up the right bits of silly business yet also provide all the minor thrills of face-punching, car chasing and perfectly awkward sexiness one comes for in these films.

The director keeps the pacing up admirably even when there’s no action happening, too. He seems to have particular fun with all the side business that makes a Eurospy movie, like The Major’s version of the dancing troupe you find in so many villain lairs: a string quartet playing Schubert. One can’t help but think that’s quite good for the lair’s security too, for while you can man-dance your way through a Bollywood dance number (just look at Sonny Deol), no vengeful hero’s going to take the time and study the cello to infiltrate your base. And hey, The Major even has a neat self-destruct device for the place, though he doesn’t quite manage to use it, alas.

Not terribly typical for the genre is the film’s aesthetic emphasis not on the pop art culture much more common in Eurospy films but what I can’t help but call posh art – there’s the Schubert, the somewhat tacky old school rich people beauty of the Major’s lair, and a general tendency of everyone furnishing a home here to go for mock Greek statuary to behold. It makes for a nice change from other films of the genre, and must certainly have jibed well with director Hunebelle’s experience with swashbucklers.

It’s all rather lovely to look at, particularly since the director is also rather good with pretty postcard shots for cars to mid-tempo chase one another in and dubious heroes to strut around in front of, nicely leaning into the travelogue aspects so many Eurospy films feature.


Obviously, there’s no depth at all to anything here – unless you make like George Eastman and drop from a roof, of course – and the film’s sexual and social politics are a bit dubious to modern eyes, but for light action and very pretty pictures, Murder for Sale is an excellent choice.

Past Misdeeds: With Death On Your Back (1967)

Original title: Con la muerte a la espalda

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


A gang of international evil-doers has invented a drug that can be used to provoke completely innocent members of the military into pushing the Big Red Button that would loose the Big One. Does it show I'm so old I even remember the Cold War?

Anyway, that drug may not sound all that useful to you or me (for what good is destroying the world, really, unless you're an insane cultist of some eldritch god?), but "the third power" we will certainly not call China (oops) is very interested in acquiring it.

Fortunately, our international evil-doers make a very public test run of their drug, giving one of those professors of every discipline you often find in these films enough data to develop an antidote against it. For once, the Americans and the Russians (as represented by agents called - I kid you not - Bill and Ivan) are of one mind, and are even willing to share the antidote with each other, if with gnashing teeth.

For some reason, the good guys ship the Professor and his assistant Monica (Vivi Bach) off to Hamburg, where he is supposed to give a suitcase containing the antidote and/or the formula for the antidote to the proper authorities during some rich woman's party. Of course, the international evil-doers get wind of this particularly useless plan – unless this takes place in a world without any telecommunications - and gun down the Professor. If not for the intervention of suave/smarmy thief Gary (George Martin) who just happens to be a sucker for beautiful women and suitcases containing valuables, they'd be able to kill Monica and steal the suitcase too.

Having acquired Monica and the suitcase, Gary isn't quite sure what to do with them - sell them on to the Chinese? The Russians? The Americans? Be a gentleman thief and protect Monica? Treat her like an actual human being? It would be nice if our hero (or not) had some time for further deliberation, but each and every faction who knows about Monica and the suitcase wants to capture, kill or buy him, leaving the poor jerk hardly a second to breathe or put the (horrible) moves on women. What's a thief to do?

It has always been one of the pleasures of the Eurospy genre for me to encounter unexpectedly fun films like With Death On Your Back. Its director Alfredo Balcázar is one of those workhorses who spent much of their career during the 60s and 70s churning out films in the popular genres of the day, trying their best to craft fun movies out of clichés, pieces taken from other movies, and actual talent. In Balcázar's case, a lot of his work took place in the Spaghetti (or is it Paella in this case?) Western, but I have to admit I don't remember having seen a single one of them, which may either speak against their quality, my memory, or my knowledge of European genre films of the 60s and 70s.

Be that as it may, With Death On Your Back seems to be the director's only Eurospy film, which is a bit of a disappointment given how entertaining the film is. Sure, much of what happens on screen is the usual mixture of a suave/jerk-y (why do these words seem to be synonymous to me by now?) hero charming the ladies in improbable ways, punching goons in the face (or whatever other body parts look most punchable), and going through various chase sequences to acquire and keep a McGuffin, but Balcázar just as surely knows how to make the generic just pretty darn fun.

For me, the light variant of the Eurospy movie to which With Death certainly belongs has a lot in common with the comedy genre. Both don't thrive as much on originality as on an ability to make the well-known and expected feel new and exciting, and both genres often survive problematic plotting through the timing of their delivery. Balcázar's movie is nothing if not good at timing and pacing, letting hardly a second go by that doesn't have something exciting happen in it, never stopping for longer than a joke or a kiss until its hero stumbles into the next punch-up or the next chase, keeping the audience hooked through breathlessness and - always an important factor in a genre movie - a willingness to entertain that makes it easy to just overlook minor flaws like the fact that the scriptwriters don't always seem to realize Hamburg is situated in Northern Germany and not in Bavaria or the silliness of most everything going on.

Balcázar is helped in his endeavour of keeping the audience away from thinking about plots, plot holes and other dumb stuff like that by an ultra-generic - or archetypal - soundtrack by Claude Bolling that's just bound to swing things along, a cast - also featuring Rosalba Neri and a very unexpected Klausjürgen Wussow as mid-level baddies - that has no problems at all to go with the silliness instead of against it (there is, as you probably know, not much worse than an actor trying to be all thespian-like in what is basically an adventurous romp), and some very decent stunt work.


Plus, there's a scene documenting the eternal struggle between earthbound human and small plane (hello, Mister Hitchcock), guest starring machine pistols, so what's not to like?

In short: Mister Dynamit – Morgen küßt euch der Tod (1967)

aka Die Slowly, You’ll Enjoy It More

A dastardly villain has somehow stolen a US nuclear bomb. For vague plot reasons, the CIA, despite having a spy among said villain’s men (excellently positioned as his chef), can’t take care of the situation themselves, so they do the most embarrassing thing and ask the German BND for help. The BND sends out its top agent, one Bob Urban (Lex Barker), also known – perhaps in the same way you call a big guy “Little” - as Mister Dynamite.

Bob’s investigation consists of the usual things Eurospy heroes get up to: sleep with every woman who can’t flee fast enough, walk into traps, get out of traps with his awesome powers of punching and ventriloquism (seriously), and shoot some people. Somewhere on the way, the CIA does send in one of their own, one Cliff (Brad Harris), also known as Cliff. Things don’t get terribly exciting.

Officially a German/Austrian/Italian/Spanish collaboration, this movie based on the popular series of German Men’s Adventure novels, is pretty German dominated behind the camera, which, despite its director Franz Josef Gottlieb usually being kind of okay when doing pulp action, does lead to exactly the result you’d fear, namely a curiously boring and anaemic film that lacks the feeling of crazy joy you can usually get out of Eurospy films. While there’s nothing about the film that exactly runs against the pleasurable parts of the genre’s formula, it all feels very bland and lifeless, with a few too many scenes of people in uniform sitting around in a grey room talking, and little excitement to be found around those scenes.

There are one or two pleasantly crazy moments, though: the film’s main villain is so much of a model railway nut his – tiny, unspectacular – lair is dominated by a model railway that if needed provides the usual monitors for henchpeople communications, as well as a lot of mysterious buttons. Oh, and for some reason, the guy likes to get drunk and roll himself up in a rug. Which is exactly the sort of nonsensical craziness I love in my Eurospy films, but is basically the only truly crazy thing about a film that seems to go out of its way not to provoke a heart attack – or even mild excitement – in anyone watching.

Most of the time, the film’s a series of scenes with Lex Barker being bland, Brad Harris being inexplicably bland and painfully underused, and bland blandness all around, with a veritable horde of German actors you’ll know from Rialto’s Edgar Wallace krimis popping up in tiny roles – with Joachim Fuchsberger as a random MP, and Eddi Arent as the BND Q, among others.

OSS 117 se dechaine (1963)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.



The American spy Roos (Jacques Harden) is killed while on a diving expedition set to find the place where the Russians are hiding their swanky new experimental atom submarine detector. This gadget would make US atom subs nearly useless, leading to dire danger for world peace because the Americans could incinerate the world's population only ten times over instead of twenty or something.

Renotte (Henry-Jacques Huet), the diving instructor Roos was working with (no, I don't know why he used random civilians in his work), convinces the French police that his charge's death was an accident, but the OSS is of a different opinion in the matter and sends its best man to finish the job Roos couldn't.

Said best man has been cursed with the dubious name of Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (Kerwin Mathews), and quickly gets to work, mostly by making himself a pest to Renotte and trying to talk himself into Renotte's girlfriend's Brigitta's (Nadia Sanders) panties.

Fortunately for the viewer, a handful of Russian agents are making it their mission to complicate matters for everyone involved. It might even be possible that Brigitta is one of them too, without even the shady Renotte's knowledge.

Of course, what kind of secret movie agent would Hubert be if he wasn't able to kiss a Russian spy over to his side.

This, some helpful French spies, and a handily placed self-destruct button should be enough to make the world a safe place by keeping the potential number of victims in a war as high as possible.

Before Ian Fleming created his much loved super spy James Bond, French writer Jean Bruce had already penned an astonishing amount of spy thrillers about OSS 117, an American agent from New Orleans whose French roots were probably helpful when trying to sell him as a hero in France. As far as I (ignorant of French as I am) understand it, they must have been quite pulpy. There had already been a single attempt to adapt the series for the cinema in the 50s, but its lack of sequels doesn't exactly speak to its success.

Of course, in 1962 everything changed for the spy film with the appearance of the first Bond movie, showing everyone with an interest in money a new, unexplored genre to exploit.

It didn't take us Europeans long to jump on the spy bandwagon, and what better way to keep away from pesky law suits about intellectual property was there than to try and start another series of OSS 117 films?
OSS 117 Se Dechaine is the first of these new, improved OSS 117 outings. As these things go, the film is more a proto Eurospy effort with a heavy thriller influence than already a full grown example of the Eurospy genre. It has some of the hallmarks of later films, like the theoretically smart yet rather bland hero who doesn't really do much besides womanizing and punching people gallantly in the face, rampant sexism that should be much too ridiculous to offend anyone, and a happy disregard for the realities of violence and death I always find charming.

What the movie misses is the full-grown insanity of later efforts in the sub-genre - there are no evil lairs of note (I don't think a normal mansion and a boring cave count), the villains are just relatively normal people, and their plans make a certain amount of sense, at least as long as you are able to run with the sort of logic the Cold War thrived on. Don't get me wrong, the plot is still silly enough to drive any arbiter of good taste to fits and the last half hour of the film or so even takes some good steps on the road to complete loss of reality, it's just that the film still seems to have illusions about being a film about dramatized espionage instead of a conglomerate of crazy ideas and scantily clad women.

Another expected element the film is lacking completely is the exoticism many a later Eurospy film used to cover up its lack of a budget and provide the film team with a nice vacation, as well as the viewer with some attractive filler material. Here, there's only black and white Corsica and Nice to look at, and not too many of the touristy parts of them for that matter.

It all feels a little low-key for what I have learned to expect from the genre. However, director Andre Hunebelle (who'd helm two further OSS 117 adventures and had before made quite a few swashbuckling adventure movies) is an obvious professional and makes the most out of what he has to work with. The action sequences aren't exactly spectacular or realized on the level of someone like Enzo Castellari, but are entertaining enough, the acting is fairly solid, and the soundtrack nicely swinging, very French jazz.

The whole film is also well photographed and should have enough of interest in it to keep people watching who have no historical interest in early Eurospy films.

On ExB: Cartes sur table (1966)

aka Attack of the Robots

In this night’s episode of Clash of the Titans, we’ll take a look at what happened when France’s second favourite American Eddie Constantine met my favourite Jess Franco.

It’s quite the thing, obviously, and you can, and most probably should, click on through to my words (possibly building sentences) about the film over at the not-at-all robotic Exploder Button.

Technorati-Markierungen: french movies,spanish movies,reviews,spies,eurospy,jess franco,françoise brion,eddie constantine,sophie hardy,comedy

Three Films Make A Post: Their Form Is Human But They Have Crossed Over ... Is There Sex After Death?

Corrida pour un espion aka Code Name: Jaguar (1965): This Spanish-French-German co-production directed by perfectly decent director Maurice Leblanc starring perfectly decent Ray Danton in a curiously non-globe-hopping, perfectly decent adventure is a perfectly decent romp, unless it suddenly turns on the torture and the chauvinism a bit much for about five annoying minutes. From time to time, the film's more humorous moments are even better than perfectly decent. And that's really all I can say about a perfectly decent Eurospy movie.

Juggernaut (1974): Richard Lester's bomb disarming thriller on the other hand is quite a bit more than just decent. It's also a very strange film compared to the way a thriller is generally supposed to be built. Instead of being based on obvious dramatics and twists, Lester's movie is an experiment in building ever-mounting tension through the most laconic presentation, a precise, unhurried narrative tone, and brilliant actors consciously being as little overtly dramatic as possible; even Richard Harris is game to working against his usual approach to any given role.

Unlike some experiments, Juggernaut actually works too, consequently pointing out a completely different direction the thriller as a genre could have taken.

ParaNorman (2012): Despite all its technical accomplishment and its stylistic deftness, this piece of animation mostly reminded me of everything I already hated about US family-centric animation when I was a kid. It's a film willing to betray its charm, its humour, its willingness to engage with the unpleasant sides of childhood, and its few moments of subversion for patronizing - the only way the film knows to talk to children seems to be to talk down to them - and deeply hypocritical moralizing at a moment's notice. The film belongs to that part of children's entertainment that seems to think doing everything else, like being honest and not pretending that everything in life will work out with a smile and/or an ascendancy to heaven is bad for children, even in a film whose story really screams for a more complex solution.

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,spanish movies,french movies,german movies,british movies,eurospy,ray danton,maurice leblanc,thriller,richard lester,richard harris,animation,comedy

Special Mission Lady Chaplin (1966)

Original title: Missione speciale Lady Chaplin

Minor evil mastermind Kobre Zoltan (Jacques Bergerac) plans fiendish things with a sunken US nuclear submarine. Most of the elements of his plan are executed by his right-hand woman, the titular Lady Chaplin (Daniela Bianchi), fashion designer, thief, and spy, and the kind of girl who wears a parachute under her clothes just in case her boss throws her out of a plane. She's what we in the Biz call true marriage material, and - one suspects given her actual competence compared to her boss's incompetence - the main reason for Zoltan's criminal success.

The CIA puts Dick Malloy (Ken Clark) on the case. Dick - despite working for the CIA repeatedly called a policeman in the film, by the way, which might hint at some character-changing shenanigans in the English dub - needs about half of the film to come to the no shit Sherlock realization that Zoltan doesn't want to steal the wreck of the sunken submarine, but has already absconded with what interests him about it: a bunch of nuclear missiles he is trying to sell to "a foreign power" represented by a certain Hilde (Helga Liné). And here I thought World War II was over.

Fortunately for the future of the Free World™, Dick has three things going for him: a) Zoltan is a raging incompetent, b) Dick is excellent at punching and shooting people and c) Lady Chaplin is all too willing to change sides when she realizes the authorities know about Zoltan's little plan. Or is she lying?

Special Mission Lady Chaplin is another highly entertaining Eurospy movie by Alberto De Martino that makes me wish the director had worked more in this particular genre. I'm not sure, though, how much of the film's entertainment value is his work, and how much that of the three action directors listed in the credits. In any case, much of what's fun about the film happens in the numerous and expected chases, shoot-outs and punch-offs.

De Martino and co. put a heavy emphasis on semi-gritty hand-to-hand fights that surprisingly do not include any fake martial arts performed by white non-martial artists. Instead they give Ken Clark - who might be not the greatest actor alive but is really good and even more enthusiastic at this sort of thing - and his co-actors and stunt people opportunity to throw themselves into somewhat rougher, and more stylishly filmed, interpretations of serial action. It's often really rather exhilarating.

In another surprise, at least half of the film's action happens in actual locations instead of the usual cardboard sets, which enables De Martino (or whoever was behind the camera of any given scene) to make the fights more dynamic and attractive simply by having more space for them to take place in; turns out verticality is a good thing in an action scene to have. It's all still clearly made on the kind of budget that probably wouldn't have paid for the hairdressers of a contemporary Bond movie, but De Martino really puts everything he can on screen and makes up for any theoretical problems the film's silly plot could cause with pacing and enthusiasm.

De Martino doesn't forget the second leg a Eurospy movie needs to stand on beside the action: women wearing various awesome fashion catastrophesilliness, curious plans, and gadgets. Lady Chaplin isn't quite as brainfart-y as some other Eurospy movies I love, but it's still a film where the villains smuggle experimental missile fuel (can't these "foreign powers" produce anything themselves!?) in form of atrocious red dresses that tend to explode when shot at, where murders are committed via armed wheelchair and taxi-shaped gas chamber, and where our hero appears to the prelude to the final fight with a harpoon gun that shoots explosive cartridges that can kill henchmen that haven't even been caught in the explosion. That's more than enough to keep me happy.

The film's only major flaw lies in its main villain. Zoltan, to be perfectly honest, is a bit of a crap villain, lacking the menace or the cackling mania the bad guy in this kind of film needs. Instead, he's just a bit of a smug jerk (quite like the heroes of many Eurospy films are, actually) with big plans. It doesn't help that Jacques Bergerac's English language dubbing voice (going by the accents, at least some of the actors dubbed themselves, but he didn't) is provided by one of those guys…who…make curious pauses…at…the…most…inappropriate times. On the plus side, Daniela Bianchi (or should I say "former Bond girl Daniela Bianchi" which is certainly want the producers would want me to say?) seems to have a whale of a time kicking ass and wearing dubious fashion, as befits the title character of a film.

Lady Chaplin provides additional little jolts of joy with a fine, jazzy Bruno Nicolai score that would have me whistling the main theme if I did in fact whistle, and the appearance of various European genre movie mainstays like Evelyn Stewart and Helga Liné in smaller roles.

It's quite a package for anyone even slightly interested in Eurospy films.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,french movies,spanish movies,reviews,eurospy,alberto de martino,ken clark,daniela bianchi,jacques bergerac,helga liné,evelyn stewart

Berlino - Appuntamento per le spie (1965)

aka Spy in Your Eye

A death-ray inventing scientist is shot while trying to leave East Berlin for greener pastures. Now everyone is after the scientist's daughter Paula (Pier Angeli), assuming she knows her father's final - and probably awesome - formula. The Americans send in Bert Morris (Brett Halsey), an agent with only minor smugness problems, to free Paula from Russian hands.

But even after he's rescued/caught her (an American agent wearing a fake hunchback kitted out with in-built blade for a novel interpretation of backstabbing and a radio, and construction equipment are involved), Paula still assures Bert and his buddies, as she did with the Russians, that she knows nothing at all about any formulas. Why, she can't even remember telephone numbers. Of course, nobody believes that, so the Russians, the Chinese (whose agents all wear bowler hats for some reason, and whose boss of course is named Ming - Fu Manchu wasn't available that day, I assume) and the Americans take turns in kidnapping, re-kidnapping, freeing, torturing and trying to sweet talk Paula. The poor woman changes hands so often, you'd think it's a handball match. When the various agents aren't treating Paula as their favourite object, they're jetting around the globe to follow up on other hints regarding the formula.

Curiously, the Russians always seem to know what the Americans are going to do next. The explanation is as simple as it is ridiculous: they've implanted a camera with integrated microphone in the eye of Bert's boss Colonel Lancaster (Dana Andrews), and are now listening in on him out of the reddest and most conspicuous vehicle they could find. You can't even trust doctors putting experimental artificial eyes into your eyeholes anymore, it seems.

Yes, Berlino (a film that does not spend much time in Berlin, by the way) is another case of a Eurospy movie that lives from and dies of its ability to press as much excellent nonsense into its running time as possible.

Structurally, the film is a total mess, so episodic the things that happen on screen never cohere into an actual story, with characters appearing for ten minutes or so only to never be mentioned again, and plans and motivations changing on a moment's notice. Fortunately, my cult movie addled brain has long since given up on a need for coherence, so if I encounter a film like this where every second scene seems to stand alone, I just attempt to enjoy what these barely connected scenes have to offer.

In this particular case, these offers are ridiculous and manifold.There's the usual number of bad martial arts fights, punch-ups, chases and shoot-outs, of course, all realized by director Vittorio Sala with somewhat bland professionalism.

At the very least, I can't complain about a lack of variety, be it geographically or otherwise, for there's some actual location work on display in material that might even have been shot for the film at hand. Large parts of the movie do take place on Italian soundstages, though. These aspects of the film are okay enough, though would make it nothing to write home about if not for the film's real strength.

That strength is of course a love for - often quite inexplicable - nonsense. There are not only the whole camera business, the particularly cheap yet silly gadgets, and the final explanation for the location of the formula to stare in delighted disbelief at, Berlino includes so much more. Take for example the Russian plan to kill Brett by letting him activate the knifing modus of a wax figure representing Napoleon; or the fact that the Russian agents seem to carry Napoleon around with them wherever they go, even after their fiendish attempt failed. One would assume more than one of the film's five scriptwriters to had realized neither the plan nor the whole Napoleon wax figure mascot thing make any sense at all, but somehow wax Napoleon still made his way in to put a smile on my face; possibly even to induce me to giggle.

This is symptomatic for the whole film: nothing ever makes sense, and when the writers find a way to shovel in stuff like the Russian's final secret lair whose interior moves about awkwardly, slowly and very loudly when things need to be hidden (that feature is of course controlled by an eminently visible row of buttons, and will cost the female Russian agent her life when it turns out she doesn't know how to jump about fifty centimetres upwards onto a slowly moving piece of furniture) instead of something sensible or logical, they will.

It's all more than enough to let the willing viewer get over little things like that lack of coherence or sanity.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,eurospy,vittorio sala,brett halsey,pier angeli,dana andrews

In short: Upperseven (1966)

Original title: Upperseven, l'uomo da uccidere

aka The Spy With Ten Faces

aka The Man of a Thousand Masks

British super agent Paul Finney aka Upperseven (Paul Hubschmid) and freelance agent of evil Kobras (Nando Gazzolo) have been clashing repeatedly, even though poor Kobras doesn't even know his best enemy's face thanks to Upperseven's love for those spy movie rubber masks that perfectly simulate real faces.

Their enmity comes to a head when Kobras and his equally evil girlfriend Birgit (Vivi Bach) get involved in the plans of "an oriental country" to prevent the creation of Pan-Africa. These plans for some reason involve the poisoning of a Swiss water reservoir, the theft of US money, and the building of a rather fantastic missile base in Ghana.

Of course, Upperseven is on the case soon enough, using his ability to dress up as whatever seems appropriate or fun, and his other ability of being quite good at punching people in the face to save world peace. Our hero is assisted by CIA agent Helen (Karin Dor), an expert in needing to be rescued. Together, there's no trap they won't stumble into but survive. Will Rosalba Neri pop up in an inconsequential role? Will Upperseven disguise himself as Kobras and seduce Birgit while Helen waits for him in a cell during the course of the movie? Will the villains' lair explode? You bet.

Upperseven is a fine demonstration that the right director can make even the most threadbare Eurospy movie (this is an Italian/German co-production fortunately and obviously creatively dominated by the Italian side) a fun time for its audience.

And threadbare the movie really is: Italy has to stand in for half a dozen countries including Ghana, the film's secret spy lairs are made out of soundstages, warehouses and blinking lights, and the plot makes particularly little sense even in a genre that is based on turning the utter nonsense of the Bond movie plots into even greater nonsense.

On that surface level, the only thing Upperseven has going for it is a very game cast. Sure, one could argue that Hubschmid is a bit too suave, and Dor her usual pretty but totally boring self, but then one would have to find time for thoughts like this in a film as hell-bent on entertaining its audience with every Eurospy movie cliché available.

Director Alberto De Martino (a typical Italian genre director with a filmography containing much of the ridiculous and the boring, yet also of the sublimely ridiculous and the fun) obviously realized that the one thing standing between his film and a bored and frustrated audience was his willingness to never let his film stop throwing something cheaply entertaining at his audience for a single second. Consequently, De Martino bombards us with one enthusiastic fistfight, mock martial arts battle, car chase, motorcycle chase, scene of rubber mask wonder, change of country while actually staying in the same country, and so on and so forth after the other, all driven by an archetypical - and therefore wonderful - Bruno Nicolai score. Taken isolated from each other, there's nothing special about any of the film's elements, but De Martino presents them with so much conviction, sometimes with what feels like a barely held in check desperation to entertain, they can't help but add up to a hundred minutes of pure Eurospy fun.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,german movies,in short,eurospy,alberto de martino,paul hubschmid,karin dor,vivi bach,nando gazzolo,rosalba neri

In short: Espionage in Tangiers (1965)

Original title: Marc Mato, agente S. 077

Finally, world peace is near, for a certain Professor Greff (Tomás Blanco) has invented a death ray for the International Atomic Energy Agency! Unfortunately, before the ray can be used for its true, peace-making, purpose (don't ask me what that may be), evildoers working for mastermind Rigo Orel (Alberto Dalbés) steal the magical little plate responsible for hot death ray action to sell it off to the highest bidder.

The Free World™ sends its smuggest psychopathic spy Mike Murphy (Luis Dávila) to get the item back. The trail leads to Tangiers, but, this being a eurospy movie and all, Murphy will have to do a bit more country hopping before the case is finished. When he's not tussling with Orel and his goons, he has various kinds of fun with his fuck buddy and spy-for-hire Lea (José Greci) who may or may not work for Orel, gets into trouble with a disgruntled ex-girlfriend and her goons, and kills and tortures as many people as he can.

On the surface, Gregg C. Tallas's Espionage in Tangiers is an archetypal eurospy movie that presents all the required elements of the subgenre with a certain degree of low budget verve. There's the ridiculous McGuffin everybody wants to get his or her hands on, the international travel where every country is represented by Spain (this being a eurospy movie where for once Spain and not Italy seems to have been the lead country of the production), various women of dubious loyalties for the hero to bed, and a lot of action scenes that are more enthusiastic than good. On that level, Espionage is quite a decent bit of entertainment.

However, watching the film, I became less and less enamoured with the film's cardboard charms and increasingly bothered by its unpleasant undercurrents. The eurospy genre often has a bit of a nasty undertone to it, which comes as no surprise from films mainly influenced by the not exactly friendly earl Connery Bond movies and each other, but for my tastes, Espionage too often steps over the line dividing the fun, "just kidding", type of unpleasantness and the truly nasty, especially since the film always tries to keep up the appearance of being a fun romp, instead of trying to make a point with its unpleasantness.

When I called Murphy a psychopath I wasn't exaggerating. Our "hero" - and the film absolutely presents him as a hero, ridiculously even letting him talk proudly of his moral code - is the kind of guy whose reaction to killing and torturing people is smirking, smiling and laughing in the most off-handed manner; it's absolutely clear he enjoys inflicting pain and suffering on others. When confronted with women, he really likes to let his fists speak, too (and yes, of course this is the sort of film where women enjoy sleeping with him after he abused them), giving the impression of a sexual sadist well on his way to becoming a serial killer. Weirdly, I find all that to be somewhat off-putting traits in my hero spies.

Again, my problem - obviously, given my tastes in films - isn't so much that Murphy and his enemies are violent and sadistic but that Espionage treats them as if they weren't, as if it, or its director Gregg C. Tallas, didn't actually realize having a laugh after throwing a knife into someone's throat is neither healthy behaviour nor a way to make a protagonist endearing.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,italian movies,gregg c. tallas,eurospy,luis dávila,josé greci

On WTF: With Death On Your Back (1967)

Original title: Con la muerte a la espalda

Sometimes, I'm still positively surprised by the movies I stumble upon. Case in point is this fine, highly entertaining Eurospy movie by Alfonso Balcázar starring George Martin and Vivi Bach.

Read more about my encounter with it in my column on WTF-Film.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,reviews,alfonso balcazar,george martin,vivi bach,klausjürgen wussow,rosalba neri,eurospy,spies,other places

In short: Fuller Report (1968)

Original title: Rapporto Fuller, base Stoccolma

Thanks to his galaxy-sized ego and his peanut-sized brain, testosterone-driven monstrosity/professional racing driver Dick Worth (Ken Clark) stumbles into an espionage conspiracy and becomes a murder suspect while he's visiting Stockholm with his manager.

Soon, Dick finds himself hounded by US agents, Soviet agents and people of undisclosed allegiance. All of them think Dick has something to do with what is known as the Fuller Report, so chasing him, kidnapping him and being involved in shoot-outs with him is the natural way to find out what that damn report actually is. Once the Americans have ascertained that Dick does in fact not have a clue about anything except driving cars and trying horrible pick-up lines on women, they decide to press him into service as their worthless, know-nothing professional bear bait, a position he is just too qualified to take, especially since he has somehow made a good impression on ballerina Svetlana Golyadkin (Beba Loncar), an escapee from the Soviet Union and the daughter of a former higher official there. Somehow, Svetlana is involved in the whole Fuller Report affair too, but how, nobody is really sure. Ironically, Dick just might be in a position to find out.

Sergio Grieco's Fuller Report is a fun little example of the Eurospy movie that does not partake in too much of the crack headed madness of large parts of its subgenre (its improbable hero and improbable plot are minor compared to what I'm used to from these films), and doesn't really feature much globe-trotting, yet still includes many of the other elements fun about the sub-genre.

The film makes itself at home in its audience's brains with many silly yet fun twists in its silly yet fun plot, clearly not giving a damn about plausibility when it can spend its time more profitably giving a damn about variety. There's also some lip service towards the concept of the spy game being dark and somewhat immoral, but the film is clearly more interested in involving its amateur spy jerk hero in outrageous yet budget-conscious adventures than in exploring anything more serious for long. That's of course an approach perfectly okay with me as long as a film does provide in the spy action department. Fuller Report certainly does that, for there's hardly a minute when its thematically appropriately named hero is not involved in one pretty exciting situation or the other: shoot-outs, car chases, kidnappings and a bit of torture are all there and provided for, and better, they're all filmed with verve and a sense of excitement.

Ken Clark, at that point already a veteran in Italian genre films, is not exactly a great thespian, but has enough screen presence to keep the frequently dickish Worth something of a charming jerk, and is certainly throwing himself into any and all action sequences with the sort of conviction that makes a cheap yet clever fight when a lackluster performance could have broken it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,spies,eurospy,in short,sergio grieco,ken clark,beba loncar,lincoln tate

Siete Minutos Para Morir (1971)

Working in Hong Kong, US agent Al Monks is instructed to pick up a list containing all members of the "Nationalist Resistance" and transport it to the US embassy. Alas, the list never arrives where it should be, and Monk's car explodes, leaving behind a corpse that might very well be the agent.

The CIA (or whichever of the States' gazillion of secret services is at work here - I only know it isn't Delta Green) learns that the list has not reached Chinese hands yet, but seems on its way into the hands of a sub-set of the mafia and so disturbs the vacation plans of one of their best men, Bill Howard (Paolo Gozlino, who looks good in a suit and in action scenes), who also just happens to be an old Korean War buddy of Monks. Howard should be just the right man to get the list back.

Of course, Howard has hardly been told his mission when the first attacks on his life begin. Turns out neither Gamma (the mafia-like organization), nor the Chinese, nor the very much not dead Monks want Howard to stick his nose in their affairs. But the American turns out to be very difficult to kill.

He isn't half stupid either, and soon cops to the fact of Monks survival. It's not too difficult to find Monk, really. Howard just has to follow his old friend's girlfriend Karin Foster (Susan Scott in one of the few films where she's working under her real name Nieves Navarro) to Milan. There, Monk has taken the place of his own twin brother, whom he murdered to have a convincing corpse in Hong Kong, and is still trying to sell off the list.

Howard will have to use all of his powers of wearing a suit, shooting, punching guys in the face and charming ladies - like Monk's secretary Virna (Betsy Bell), for example - in improbable ways to solve the case. Oh, and there might be treachery from a cameoing George Hilton afoot, too.

Spanish director Ramon Fernandez' Siete Minutos Para Morir is a film finding itself quite in the middle ground of the Eurospy genre. It's neither one of the truly, ravingly insane films, nor one of the dark and earnest ones of the genre. There's a certain amount of silliness afoot - Monk has an awesome hand guillotine in his safe, the Gamma leader likes to work his magic from a cardboard computer room, there's a silver death trap room of the old fashioned squeezing sort, and George Hilton gets a wonderfully ridiculous fake helicopter cockpit to shake in - but it's all in service of basic pulp thrills and not of camp.

One could argue that the film wastes a perfectly good set-up for a tale about two former friends who find themselves on different sides of the spy game. Siete Minutos isn't, however, a film that ever even suggests it might go in that more subtle (or melodramatic) direction. Instead, Fernandez uses his (pretty miniscule) budget to deliver a series of action scenes taking place in sometimes rather cramped, and always un-exotic locales, while archetypal spy movie music plays. Well, and to catch a few looks at the film's various pretty ladies, some of whom will even be competent except for their inexplicable love for our chauvinist hero.

Though this might not sound all that exciting, in practice, Siete Minutos turns out to be perfectly fine spy fodder thanks to Fernandez' tight and dynamic direction. The man didn't have much money to realize his action scenes, but by the movie gods, he'd use every single cent he got, producing a film that never slows down, racing from one bit of cheap excitement to the next, very much in the spirit of the old serials. Which is clearly preferable to a ponderous film full of filler.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,reviews,ramon fernandez,paolo gozlino,betsy bell,susan scott,george hilton,eurospy,spies

In short: Spies Kill Silently (1966)

aka Spy Strikes Silently

Famous scientists of a humanitarian bend - which in this film means scientists doing things like looking for a cure for cancer, not building death rays, surprisingly enough - die in mysterious ways. It looks like natural causes, but the international secret services soon figure out that the scientists were all murdered. By whom and why is unknown (and the latter will stay unknown even after the movie is through).

The British send the best spy of the Americans (no, I don't understand how that's supposed to work either), Michael Drum (Lang Jeffries) to Beirut to protect a Professor working on the cure for cancer there. Whoever is responsible for the other murders isn't too keen on Drum's presence, so the assassination attempts on him start before he has even had the opportunity to meet the man he is supposed to guard, but if there's one thing Drum is good at, it's killing back people who want to kill him. It's just too bad that he never leaves any survivors he could question about the identity of their boss or bosses.

Despite his awesome powers of face-punching, Drum isn't able to protect his charge. A few minutes of distraction by two cops who inexplicably attack the agent are enough to leave the poor cancer destroyer dead.

At least these two dead cops put Drum on the right track. They were obviously drugged and mind-controlled by some fiendish mastermind. But who, oh who might it be, and what does said fiendish mastermind want? Only lots of travel between London and Beirut will solve this riddle.

Maria Caiano's Spies Kill Silently will probably not go down as one of the unknown masterpieces of Eurospy cinema, but in its modest yet confident way, it is a fun enough little film.

Caiano's direction isn't too sexy or stylish, but it lacks the sloppiness that drags some parts of the Eurospy genre down. Some viewers seem to have their problems with the film's pacing, I however would call it tight enough to work.

The movie stands on the line between the more batshit Eurospy films and a more realistic sensibility. While the big bad's plan and his methods to realize it are beautifully silly nonsense, and the scientist hunt only seems to happen to point his enemies in his direction, the rest of the film is on the more gray and unfriendly side of the genre. Jeffries' Drum is a very competent fighter, yet he lacks the suaveness and the (often annoying) propensity to torture his enemies and innocent women with bad wisecracks many other Eurospy heroes show in abundance. He isn't exactly a believable spy in Le Carré sense, but he's not one of the silly buggers that dominate European spy films either.

The film's action scenes tend to the more realistic side too, feeling a bit more brutal than usual.

"Realistic" is of course a very relative phrase. We are still talking about a film whose evil mastermind uses a mind control drug and a death ray and likes to rant long and pointlessly about his own awesomeness.

Spies Kill Silently is a satisfying little film that hits enough of the required genre beats to be fun.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spies,eurospy,mario caiano,lang jeffries,erika blanc,in short

On WTF: OSS 117 Se Dechaine (1963)

This week, my guest post at WTF-Film concerns an early example of the Eurospy film, interestingly based on a literary character older than James Bond. It's very much "Eurospy - The Early Years". Read more at the obvious place.

 

Technorati-Tags: french movies,eurospy,spies,reviews,andre hunebelle,other places

Fury in Marrakesh (1966)

aka Death Pays In Dollars

Reader, be warned, I'm going to spoil the ending of the film somewhat fierce. I have to, trust me.

When a surviving Nazi, his very pulp-German henchwomen and much less German henchmen and his merry band of assorted international criminals finally find the tons of perfect counterfeit money Hitler had made to destabilize the Allied economy, but didn't get around to use anymore, it looks like they're going to be rich.

Too bad that Monique, one henchmen's girlfriend, makes off with a part of the money. One lasered to death henchman later, and the bad guys are chasing Monique through New York, where the woman's tendency to throw the fake money (which is supposed not to be identifiable as fake, yet still is identified as such) has already drawn the interest of the CIA.

All discrete and competent American agents are already in the field somewhere, so the section chief has no choice but to draft agent-in-training Bill Dixon (Stephen Forsyth, later of Hatchet for the Honeymoon fame) for the mission.

Seeing what happens during the rest of the film, they might as well not have bothered sending anyone. Proving his competence, Bill lets Monique be kidnapped by the baddies. He follows them to Marrakesh where a friendly British agent (Gianluigi Crescenzi) does most of the heavy lifting, while Dixon stumbles into traps and ogles women.

Fury in Marrakesh, directed by Luciano Martino (brother of the Sergio), should work excellently as a touchstone for a viewer's disposition towards Eurospy films in the special Italian style.

It has all the typical and necessary elements of its genre in place:

• The suave and highly unlikely protagonist who could as well not have shown up for all the good he does, but who is at least excellent with his fists as well as with the ladies
• Said ladies, all pretty, and either the protagonist's future bedmates (though Dixon isn't all that competent here, either) or evil sexy killing machines or both or...but I'll explain the last "or" later
• A plot that is only a thin excuse for a fun assortment of globe-trotting (New York! Marrakesh! The Swiss Alps!), chases, pulpy fistfights and explosions; a plot which in this case has some especially puzzling moments - why exactly does the disguised main bad guy save our hero's life?
• Directorial execution that is nothing if not enthusiastic and fast-paced, the Eurospy movie being one of the few B-movie genres that nearly never falls into the habit of talking anything to death. There are always women to ogle or men to hit!
• The spy gadget scene, silly, fun and usually providing our hero with a shooting cigarette lighter
• The dubious dubbing. Fury is an especially fun film in this regard, since it also exists in a version that dubs the "hero" (I am using the word loosely here) Bob Flemming, thereby incorporating it into a different series of films. What Dixon's/Flemming's initial name is, is anybody's guess.
• Moments of utterly nonsensical "what the fuck!?". I'd like to see another film beat the ending of Fury in that respect, when the pretty female Asian agent (Mitsouko), who has just helped Dixon out (=has done all the actual work) in the thrilling finale, suddenly pulls off her wig and turns out to be the best transvestite agent the CIA could possibly wish for, leaving Dixon with the sort of problem James Bond never had

If all that sounds fun to you (and golly, does it ever sound fun to me!), you'll probably love Fury in Marrakesh as much as any other Eurospy movie you are going to encounter in the future.

If it doesn't, I am sorry to say that, dear reader, there is not much hope for you.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,spies,eurospy,steven forsyth,luciano martino,reviews

Temptress Of A Thousand Faces (1969)

Hong Kong, poor Hong Kong! When not overrun with midgets shooting acid from their goiters or gangsters shedding blood in a most heroic fashion, the (swinging) city's peace and quiet is disturbed by evil masterminds like the Temptress of a Thousand Faces (Pat Ting Hung). As her name suggests, she is a master of disguise, using those magical latex masks we know and love from a lot of movies to good effect.

As far as evil masterminds go, Tempie's one of the less intimidating ones - she's a big time jewel thief without a proclivity for bloodshed, so the non-jewel-possessing part of the world is safe from her plans.

Her biggest ally is in fact the Hong Kong police itself, here mostly present through The Detective, an older guy who is always barking at his underlings how incompetent they are without ever showing the slightest trace of competence himself, Porn Cop (so called because the film never bothers to give him a name and he has trouble discerning between porn and reality) and our heroine, Chi Ying (Tina Fei Chin).

All would be swell for the Temptress, if she wasn't crushing on a reporter named Yu Ta (Liang Chen), who - what are the odds! - is also the boyfriend of Chi Ying.

What's an evil woman to do when she's in love with another woman's boyfriend? Well, why not start with kidnapping the guy's cop-girlfriend to a) strip her down to her underwear and tie her up nicely and b) tell her that you are not that evil - after all, you are robbing rich people, who are all evil themselves and when you were still poor, nobody helped you; also, men are evil. and c) torture her by spinning her around really fast in something reminding me of a shower cubicle; afterwards torture her some more with electro shocks.

Surprisingly enough, Chi Ying continues her hunt for the Temptress afterwards, which soon leads to another kidnapping. But this time, the Temptress disguises herself as the policewoman to rob some more jewels (really, she has to pay off the cost of her lair) and discredit her enemy.

That goes rather well, what with every copper in town as stupid as one of those damn flies that tries to drown itself in a bowl of soup again and again.

Chi Ying is not willing to give up though, and uses the hypnotic powers of leg rubbing to escape from the watchful eyes of Porn Cop. She's caught again soon enough, but not before she's had a bout of sweet sweet love-making with Yu Ta.

It must have been very very sweet love-making indeed, since the reporter is now absolutely convinced that Chi Ying is not the Temptress. He starts the woman's rehabilitation at once by putting on drag (and hot damn, that's a sight that will sink into my nightmares) and robbing some jewels. He leaves the Temptress' card at the scene of the crime, leaving the Detective not much choice than to let Chi Ying go free.

Alas, she doesn't even have the chance to go and thank her man - the henchmen of the Temptress (some of course in the guise of blindmen) grab her again!

After dressing Chi Ying down to her underwear and installing a TV tuned to the Yu Ta bedroom channel, Tempie (the tramp!) again dresses up as the cop and has some fun with Yu Ta - who is of course oblivious to the fact his girlfriend now has a different body below her face.

The part with the TV is a mistake. A very pissed off Chi Ying punches and shoots (while still in her underwear, obviously) through a whole lot of henchmen and goes off to rescue her men.

 

As you might probably have guessed, this Shaw Brothers epic is one of the studio's experiments with the Eurospy formula, spicing things up with Diabolik-like supervillaindom and as much sleaze as it could get away with. Which, in 1969, was quite a lot, as long as nobody got too naked.

Temptress (directed by the South Korean Chang-hwa Jeong, a typical Shaw house style director without much of a distinctive voice, but the sure hand of an experienced craftsman) pushes all the right buttons of the genre: the cheap but cool sets, the sometimes outrageous outfits (Tempie's got a thing for a wide variety of henchpeople uniforms), the highly dubious plot and so on and so on.

There's enough action to keep everything moving all the time. As usual in this genre, the fight choreography is nothing to write home about, but Tina Fei Chin does much of her fighting herself while dressed in mini-skirts, high heels and wearing gravity-defying big 60s hair, so I'll give her a pass for the effort alone.

Really if this film does not sound fun for you, there's not much I can do - it's probably the perfect Shaw Brothers not-Eurospy film with all the problems and virtues this title brings with it.

(A warning to sensitive people: there is a Wong Jing-like rape "joke" at the end that could make you a little mad. Personally, I am so desensitized that a scene in which Porn cop and another cop are grabbing two of Tempie's harem henchwomen to "have their fun" and the rest of the police and the henchwomen are laughing at those whacky comedy cops does hardly even register anymore.)

 

Technorati-Tags: hong kong movies,shaw brothers,eurospy,action,comedy,reviews,tina fei chin